Re: "Barack Obama and dreams of his father, " Opinions, Feb. 22. In commenting on President Obama's remarks about fatherhood and single mothers, Jarvis DeBerry missed one important point: the connection between single motherhood and the high incarceration rate of young men in this country. In the United States today, one out of 15 African-American men is incarcerated, as compared with one out of 36 for Hispanics and one out of 106 for white men. Almost half of those in state prisons are serving time for nonviolent offenses.

In Louisiana, where we have the highest incarceration rate in the world, one in 86 adults is in the prison system, nearly double the national average. Nearly two-thirds of those are serving long and sometimes life sentences for nonviolent offenses. With that many men behind bars, it's no surprise that we have a lot of single moms.

Whether or not President Obama is right to connect gun violence with the absence of fathers, he is certainly right to point out that absent fathers pose a serious problem to families in this country. And while some fathers (and some mothers) may choose not to be involved in the lives of their children, many are absent because we have locked them up.

It's time to rethink how we treat nonviolent offenders. As we impose long and even life sentences on people who are not dangers to society, we punish not just them but their families, and ultimately we all pay the price. We must do better. Our future depends on it.